I'm not liking the size of the maps in that 1 hour video. Everything else met with my approval.

Well, it's just two maps. But I guess they are a bit on the small side. I haven't played the original in a LONG time, I don't recall how big the maps in that one were, but I don't remember them being huge either?

Well, it's just two maps. But I guess they are a bit on the small side. I haven't played the original in a LONG time, I don't recall how big the maps in that one were, but I don't remember them being huge either?

They're not that large but can be slow to work though at the beginning with slow and weak rookies. Distances quickly become less of an issue due to increased TUs, rapid reconnaissance via psionics (every alien is a scout) and the fact that you can fit 3 Fusion ball hovertanks, 2 guys with blaster launchers and more than enough grunts in an Avenger; cue death from afar via guided missile spam.

On the strength of this I want to pre-order. I want to pre-order for PC, but I need to see the system specs which they haven't released yet. Since it seemed so easy to control with the controller, console would not be a game breaker but if it's playable on my computer I'd rather have it there.

"How to improve on perfection?" asked a friend who saw the commercial. I know I'm getting this game...even if it's only sorta kinda as good. But who knows? Perhaps it will capture the flow and the spirit as well.

Wow, that Greg guy with the skinny girl arms is terrible at the game. Funny when you see a developer not know how to play something he helped make.

Rubel wrote:

"How to improve on perfection?" asked a friend who saw the commercial. I know I'm getting this game...even if it's only sorta kinda as good. But who knows? Perhaps it will capture the flow and the spirit as well.

First game was fantastic, but it wasn't perfect. I didn't like how you spent TU getting out of cover, turning around, firing, and then running back into cover. It was unrealistic and wasted time. This one accounts for cover, suppression, and flanking. Good stuff.

Wow, that Greg guy with the skinny girl arms is terrible at the game. Funny when you see a developer not know how to play something he helped make.

I think a live stream where you're trying to demo the game like that is not necessarily the most conducive environment to good play. You see similarly bad play on Giant Bomb quick looks and similar types of coverage.

Is it horribly selfish of me that, even for a game that looks as great as this (and I'm a huge XCOM fan,) I just don't think I can put down $50 for it?

I've been spoiled by Steam, I'm sure, but anything north of $20 just screams "you're wasting your money! Wait a few months and you'll get it so much cheaper!"

I had a similar reaction. Generally now, single player games are delayed purchases for me for exactly that reason. On the other hand, I still tend to buy multiplayer games when they're fresh (and full price) because I'm afraid that if I wait the player base will be gone by the time is on sale.

Which of course is a bad case of incentivizing, because generally I prefer single player games to most multiplayer games and a lot of trends in multiplayer games recently (bars filling up!) irritate me. But it's also hard for me to justify basically spending upwards of an extra 25 to 40 bucks for "instant gratification" rather than waiting a few months, especially on a budget.

Anyway! That being said, I think I'll still end up getting X-Com, though I'm debating waiting for reviews just in case (though I would be very surprised if the game itself wasn't really what I think it was, and I generally trust Firaxis to not completely screw up a game with either bugs or huge balance issues). The preorder bonuses don't do a whole lot for me...

Anyway! That being said, I think I'll still end up getting X-Com, though I'm debating waiting for reviews just in case (though I would be very surprised if the game itself wasn't really what I think it was, and I generally trust Firaxis to not completely screw up a game with either bugs or huge balance issues).

I used to think the same thing, at least until Civ5 came out. That's why I'm waiting until at least after a few weeks of user reviews before pulling the trigger, on top of my skepticism about some of their game mechanics changes.

Is it horribly selfish of me that, even for a game that looks as great as this (and I'm a huge XCOM fan,) I just don't think I can put down $50 for it?

I've been spoiled by Steam, I'm sure, but anything north of $20 just screams "you're wasting your money! Wait a few months and you'll get it so much cheaper!"

I had a similar reaction. Generally now, single player games are delayed purchases for me for exactly that reason. On the other hand, I still tend to buy multiplayer games when they're fresh (and full price) because I'm afraid that if I wait the player base will be gone by the time is on sale.

This is especially true once I apply induction, and realize that I'm due for delayed gratification from that 3-month old game.

That said, I have little doubt that the game will be good, and it could easily be excellent. I don't get the Civ5 complaints either (I think it's best Civ game yet, in fact), so Firaxis still has a great track record in my book.

I ended up pre-ordering. It's not really the smart thing to do financially speaking, but I've got the disposable income that I can afford to humor my urge to try the new X-Com game out of the gate.

I don't really trust that it'll be a good game, but I'm at least cautiously optimistic. Firaxis used to have a pretty solid gold track record. (well, Pirates! was kind of boring, but...) Then there was Civ 5 which was an OK game that got polished into a pretty good game, but that was undermined by an incredibly crappy AI they never fixed. I've followed a lot of Enemy Unknown's development and I've seen some stuff I've liked, and some stuff I haven't. I've also seen some developer coverage and been to their PAX panel and there were some moments where they said stuff that was pretty reassuring, a few questions they dropped the ball on totally, some questions where they gave a good answer but it wasn't an answer I liked, and lots of moments where I was mostly left thinking "they're really heavily playing up the 'we get X-Com!' angle to appeal to the existing X-Com fanbase." In environments like that it's hard to judge where they're really coming from and how much of it is marketing versus reality.

So, overall, I don't really know what to expect. I am, however, hugely excited about the chance to play another X-Com game and I can afford to drop $50 on an entertainment impulse purchase every now and then, so once more unto the breach for me and I'll definitely be posting impressions.

Is this going to show on Steam? Civ5 was and I would like to preorder but it does not seem to be currently present. I hope so. I'm really detesting how certain companies are trying to fragment (this opinion brought to you by seriously subpar experiences with Origin and NCSoft online (mis)management librarires).

Is this going to show on Steam? Civ5 was and I would like to preorder but it does not seem to be currently present. I hope so. I'm really detesting how certain companies are trying to fragment (this opinion brought to you by seriously subpar experiences with Origin and NCSoft online (mis)management librarires).

Is this going to show on Steam? Civ5 was and I would like to preorder but it does not seem to be currently present. I hope so. I'm really detesting how certain companies are trying to fragment (this opinion brought to you by seriously subpar experiences with Origin and NCSoft online (mis)management librarires).

See cf18's post a few above this one - yes to Steam

Derp. Completely missed that post and didnt get any hits on a Steam search last night. Thanks!

Is it horribly selfish of me that, even for a game that looks as great as this (and I'm a huge XCOM fan,) I just don't think I can put down $50 for it?

I've been spoiled by Steam, I'm sure, but anything north of $20 just screams "you're wasting your money! Wait a few months and you'll get it so much cheaper!"

I'm willing to throw down for it (though I did it on Amazon for $44.99). For one, I love Firaxis games. Two, I'm more than willing to spend the extra bucks to support not only a 'old school' strategy game, but F'in X-COM! I want to pay them for this game, I want them to make money, and I want them to realize that they should keep making these kinds of games.

Also, while the pre-order bonus isn't huge, I'll definitely take more customization options for my troops, that's a big part of the game for me, making my soldiers unique, so it hurts that much more when they go down. Not to mention, the Elite Soldier pack is with pre-orders anywhere, not just Steam. So the other two items, TF2 stuff and Civ V, don't need as I don't care about TF2 stuff and already have Civ V.

That said, I have little doubt that the game will be good, and it could easily be excellent. I don't get the Civ5 complaints either (I think it's best Civ game yet, in fact), so Firaxis still has a great track record in my book.

Civ5 was a mess on release. Bad AI, bad UI quirks, bad diplomacy, bad game balance decisions, a game engine that did and still does drag good systems to their knees, etc.

Delor wrote:

and lots of moments where I was mostly left thinking "they're really heavily playing up the 'we get X-Com!' angle to appeal to the existing X-Com fanbase."

I got that vibe from the gameplay video as well. Something bad would happen, and you'd hear "That's X-Com!". No, that's the guy playing the game being a muppet. Having your last surviving squaddie scramble back to the Skyranger with his tail between his legs, that's X-Com.

Having your last surviving squaddie scramble back to the Skyranger with his tail between his legs, that's X-Com.

Heh. Good times.

That's an especially familiar sensation for me. I never really did the "land and take off" thing to reduce the support hit you'd take for not responding to terror missions. Didn't know that helped for much of my X-Com career, and when I did I still wouldn't do it because it seemed kind of like an exploit.

What I would do instead was send out a team, go out and try to inflict as many alien casualties as possible without exposing myself to too much risk, and then just pack up and leave the civilians to their fate. It was fun, it helped more than just ignoring the terror site, and it was in-character.

The desperation the game could inspire in you was pretty awesome. Going into a battle you don't planning on winning, running home with your leg between your tails as the world falls deeper into alien domination, and still feeling like a winner because you bagged a few aliens in your futile fighting retreat- that's an experience games don't give you often. Guerrilla warfare as an emergent strategy rather than a scripted plot point is pretty awesome, too.

I watched the game play video and loved it. Yeah the dude playing does have skinny arms and his hair looks like he just go out of the shower. The game play looks pretty awesome. I love X-com. I got the original 3.5" demo disc and played the included mission over and over. It was just about impossible to keep all of the squaddies alive. I bought my first cd drive so I could get the full game on disc. I printed out Kasey Chang's GameFAQ back in the day as well.

I will be getting this game but the initial price point is a bit steep - like MW3 or Elder Scrolls pricing. The digital pc price is easier to stomach but the elite soldier pack seems kinda lame - i mean color customization? - that should be free. I will buy it but will wait till launch date eve.

Watched the videos and they all looked good, but, honestly, for better or worse, my mind was already made up when I heard Firaxis was doing the remake. I haven't pre-ordered anything in ages, and I hardly ever buy anything on release day these days, but I figured what the hell.

What I would do instead was send out a team, go out and try to inflict as many alien casualties as possible without exposing myself to too much risk, and then just pack up and leave the civilians to their fate. It was fun, it helped more than just ignoring the terror site, and it was in-character.

I actually like the change in terror missions seen so far, and being able to permanently rescue civilians from the mission; bonus points if the mission scoring system makes it impossible to get a significantly better than neutral score without rescuing a bunch of them.

Completing a terror mission in the original game with a verdict of "Good', 0-1 surviving civilians and a bunch -- or, in case of snakemen missions, almost all -- of them killed by X-COM operatives always felt a little bit strange.

I'm catching up on the gameplay videos now that I'm seriously considering getting the game. I'm so far cautiously optimistic. The tactical game actually reminds me of the 3DS tactical TBS by Julian Gollop, Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, so while I'm annoyed that it's not a more faithful reproduction of the original, I also know that modern conventions can still be fun.

Are there gameplay videos/screens of the research & manufacture process? I hope that this game at least captures the mood of being resource deprived, even if it doesn't go quite as hard as the original.

My biggest fear at this point is though the lack of procedurally generated maps. Without seeing all the maps and playing through, it'll be hard to say whether the higher average quality of each map is worth losing an infinite map count.

ramases wrote:

Completing a terror mission in the original game with a verdict of "Good', 0-1 surviving civilians and a bunch -- or, in case of snakemen missions, almost all -- of them killed by X-COM operatives always felt a little bit strange.

Ah, the situations where killing civilians is better so they won't turn into crysalids. Good times.

Are there gameplay videos/screens of the research & manufacture process? I hope that this game at least captures the mood of being resource deprived, even if it doesn't go quite as hard as the original.

They've been far less enthusiastic about showing how the non-combat part of XCOM works, ostensibly to avoid spoiling certain story elements.

There's however the suggestion that on higher difficulty, you'll want to stun aliens (just shooting them blows their weapons to pieces and you'll get only fragmets) to capture their stuff and save you the hassle of building them yourself. If that's how it really works in game, it'll sure be interesting.

Viridis wrote:

My biggest fear at this point is though the lack of procedurally generated maps. Without seeing all the maps and playing through, it'll be hard to say whether the higher average quality of each map is worth losing an infinite map count.

I'm actually not that concered about that. Later missions in UFO didn't have much diversity either, due to the Avenger and the UFO taking up quite a lot of the map. Though maybe the usual abundance of cash (I usually sold enough laser cannons to arm every airforce on the planet three times over) and Elerium in the late game, and my tendency to reconnoiter buildings for alien activity by launching fusion balls at them, has an undue influence on that assessment.

This reminds me, however, of the fact that they haven't shown us UFO retrieval maps before. Maybe those are still generated procedurally?

Quote:

Ah, the situations where killing civilians is better so they won't turn into crysalids. Good times.

Yep, though I later found out that by getting a sectoid navigator early (Operation "Replaceable Rookie" on sectoid large scouts without blown up engine: Gank the aliens standing near the navigation console with stun rods. Due to spawn positions, one of them is always a medic and one is a navigator) to get the Hyperwave Decoder and just have two interceptors with Avalanche launchers at each base, gives you reliable global detection and interception capability, even against terror ships, rather early.

This reminds me, however, of the fact that they haven't shown us UFO retrieval maps before. Maybe those are still generated procedurally?

<snip>

I recall in one of their interviews that all the maps are already generated and have the layouts pre-determined. The variability is which maps show up on your playthrough and which spawn point your team drops in on.

Yikes, lack of Win XP support is surprising. Nothing in this game really justifies a newer OS since it's DX9 and a console release. I don't want to use a controller for this though. Instead of preordering, I'll definitely wait for early impressions and reviews before deciding I need to move to a new OS just for this game.

Quote:

I recall in one of their interviews that all the maps are already generated and have the layouts pre-determined. The variability is which maps show up on your playthrough and which spawn point your team drops in on.

That's too bad. From what I can tell, they've eliminated a lot of the emergent qualities and random generation aspects of the game. You can't have a large force now, base design seems pointless without alien retaliation, maps are predetermined, etc. They're welcome to make changes if they honestly come up with something superior, but I'm a bit skeptical.

I recall in one of their interviews that all the maps are already generated and have the layouts pre-determined. The variability is which maps show up on your playthrough and which spawn point your team drops in on.

We'll have to see how many different maps there are then, and how good they are. Maybe including a modkit to enable player-supplied maps would be a good idea.

Its not without upsides, though: The better you can playtest a map, the easier it is to make it challenging without making it inherently unfair. The original game had setups that were not hard but stupid and unfair, like terror missions where you exit the Skyranger, notice you are on a long street running the length of a map, with grass to both sides and a bunch of cyberdisks having a jolly good time. I recall looking for a "shoot the Skyranger pilot for being a bloody idiot" button back then.

hoyle1911 wrote:

base design seems pointless without alien retaliation, maps are predetermined, etc. They're welcome to make changes if they honestly come up with something superior, but I'm a bit skeptical.

Supposedly you get certain boni if you place certain facilities next to each other, and that each level you dig downward becomes more expensive to build and maintain. How large of an impact that has remains to be seen, especially the financial aspect. Finances in the original game were ridiculously broken and defacto ceased to be a concern by the early midgame, simply due to amount of loot you'd accumulate on higher difficulties; actually, that part of the game was way easier on Superhuman than on Beginner.

Supposedly you get certain boni if you place certain facilities next to each other, and that each level you dig downward becomes more expensive to build and maintain. How large of an impact that has remains to be seen, especially the financial aspect. Finances in the original game were ridiculously broken and defacto ceased to be a concern by the early midgame, simply due to amount of loot you'd accumulate on higher difficulties; actually, that part of the game was way easier on Superhuman than on Beginner.

At least out of the box, the difficulty settings in the original game were broken; after (I think) the first save/reload cycle, all games were effectively on Beginner difficulty. There was a third-party patch that fixed that eventually, and TFTD also fixed it.

And yes, selling off alien corpses by the dozens (I always imagined that they were being sold to alternative medicine distributors...) and plasma pistols by the score meant that cash wasn't usually an issue.

Supposedly you get certain boni if you place certain facilities next to each other

Yeah, they mentioned that at the PAX panel to argue that base building would still have depth even though you can't build multiple bases. I'm a bit skeptical about that particular aspect- it could work, but it seems more likely that that just means base layout will be kind of a puzzle that you'll have to figure out a good layout for once and then the problem is solved and it's not really adding much more thought or decision making to the game.